Her design was also influenced by the Anglo-French development of ironclad floating batteries to bombard Russian forts during the same war.

Gloire was designed by the French naval architect Henri Dupuy de Lôme as a 5,630-ton broadside ironclad with a wooden hull.

Her 12 cm-thick (4.7 in) armour plates, backed with 43 cm (17 in) of timber, resisted hits by the experimental shooting of the strongest guns of the time (the French 50-pounder and the British 68-pounder) at full charge, at a distance of 20 metres (65 ft).

[3] Gloire was launched at the arsenal of Mourillon, Toulon, on 24 November 1859; and entered service in August 1860.

In September of that year, she escorted the imperial yacht Aigle [fr] carrying Emperor Napoleon III to Algiers.